Vril
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Vril, from the early science fiction novel Vril: The Power of the Coming Race, by Edward Bulwer-Lytton, is supposedly a kind of energy in the form of an all permeating fluid possessed by a subterranean race (the Vril-ya), who are said to be the descendants of Atlantis. Its uses amongst the Vril-ya vary from an agent of destruction to a healing substance. It is said that if army met army and both had command of the force, both sides would be annihilated.
[edit] Uses of Vril
In the novel, the narrator is given several explanations about Vril and its usage. According to Zee, the narrator's host, Vril can be changed into the mightiest agency over all types of matter, both animate and inanimate. It can destroy like lightning or replenish life, heal, or cure. It is used to rend ways through solid matter. Its light is said to be steadier, softer and healthier than that from any flammable material. It can also be used as a power source for animating mechanisms, as done by Zee. Vril can be harnessed by use of the Vril staff or mental concentration.
[edit] Vril Staff
A Vril staff is an object in the shape of a wand or a staff which is used as a channel for Vril. The narrator describes it as hollow with 'stops', 'keys', or 'springs' in which Vril can be altered, modified or directed to either destroy or heal. The staff is about the size of a walking stick but can be lengthened or shortened according to the user's preferences. The appearance and function of the Vril staff differs according to gender, age, etc. Some staffs are more potent for destruction, others for healing. The staffs of children are said to be much simpler than those of sages; in those of wives and mothers the destructive part is removed while the healing aspects are emphasized. The destructive force is so great that the fire lodged in the hollow of a rod directed by the hand of a child could cleave the strongest fortress or cleave its burning way from the van to the rear of an embattled host.
[edit] Vril Bath
An interesting use of Vril is stated as follows:
It is their custom also, at stated but rare periods, perhaps four times a-year when in health, to use a bath charged with vril. They consider that this fluid, sparingly used, is a great sustainer of life; but used in excess, when in the normal state of health, rather tends to reaction and exhausted vitality. For nearly all their diseases, however, they resort to it as the chief assistant to nature in throwing off the complaint.
[edit] Vril society
The book was quite popular in the late 19th century, and for a time the word "Vril" came to be associated with "life-giving elixirs". Indeed, the still-popular English drink Bovril takes its name from the combination of the words "Bovine" and "Vril".
Some readers believe the book is non-fiction, and "Vril" has become associated with theories about Nazi-piloted Flugscheiben ("Flight Discs"), Vril-powered KSK (Kraftstrahlkanone, "force-ray cannon" — transmission rods that produce potent energy rays), Jesuit "spiritual exercises", and Atlanteans to name a few.
The story may have inspired Nikola Tesla when he invented remote control. While Tesla denied this, biographer Marc J. Seifer says the inventor probably knew the story given Bulwer-Lytton's popularity at the time.
"Vril" is also mentioned in the book "HACKERS" by Steven Levy.
Several authors (detailed below) have claimed that a Vril Gesellschaft (Society), or Luminous Lodge, was a secret community of occultists in pre-Nazi Berlin. The Berlin Vril Society was in fact a sort of inner circle of the Thule Society. It was also thought to be in close contact with the English group known as the Hermetic Order of the Golden Dawn. No verifiable evidence of the Vril Society's existence has ever been published.
There is only one primary source of information on the Vril Society: Willy Ley, a German rocket engineer who fled to the United States in 1933. In 1947, Ley published an article entitled "Pseudoscience in Naziland". Following a description of Ariosophy, Ley writes: "The next group was literally founded upon a novel. That group which I think called itself Wahrheitsgesellschaft - Society for Truth - and which was more or less localized in Berlin, devoted its spare time looking for Vril."
The 1967 book Aufbruch ins dritte Jahrtausend: von der Zukunft der phantastischen Vernunft by Louis Pauwels and Jacques Bergier, published in Switzerland, includes an account of the society. The Vril information takes up about a tenth of the volume, the remainder of which details other esoteric speculations, but the authors fail to clearly explain whether this section is fact or fiction. New publications appeared in the 1990s, by the German right-wing author Jan Udo Holey, writing under penname Jan van Helsing.
The Vril Society as described by these authors includes many elements common to conspiracy theories:
- Hidden masters (the members of the Vril society and their antagonist, the Jewish World Conspiracy)
- An escape by Hitler and other Nazis from Berlin to the South Pole
- Flying saucers, secret Nazi inventions, and psychic channeling powers
- Aliens from Aldebaran
[edit] Claims in detail
According to these authors, the Vril Society was founded as "The All German Society for Metaphysics" in 1921 to explore the origins of the Aryan race. It was formed by a group of female psychic mediums led by the Thule Gesellschaft medium Maria Orsitsch (Orsic) of Zagreb, who claimed to have received communication from Aryan aliens living on Alpha Tauri, in the Aldebaran system. Allegedly, these aliens had visited Earth and settled in Sumeria, and the word Vril was formed from the ancient Sumerian word "Vri-Il" ("like god"). A second medium was known only as Sigrun, a name etymologically related to Sigrune, a Valkyrie and one of Wotan's nine daughters in Norse legend.
The Society allegedly taught concentration exercises designed to awaken the forces of Vril, and their main goal was to achieve Raumflug (Spaceflight) to reach Aldebaran. To achieve this, the Vril Society joined the Thule Gesellschaft and DHvSS (Men of the Black Stone) to fund an ambitious program involving an inter-dimensional flight machine based on psychic revelations from the Aldebaran aliens.
Members of the Vril Society are said to have included Adolf Hitler, Alfred Rosenberg, Heinrich Himmler, Hermann Göring, and Hitler's personal physician, Dr. Theodor Morell. These were original members of the Thule Society which supposedly joined Vril in 1919. The NSDAP (NationalSozialistische Deutsche ArbeiterPartei) was created by Thule in 1920, one year later. Dr. Krohn, who helped to create the Nazi flag, was also a Thulist.
With Hitler in power in 1933, both Thule and Vril Gesellschafts allegedly received official state backing for continued disc development programs aimed at both spaceflight and possibly a war machine.
After 1941 Hitler forbade secret societies, so both Thule and Vril were documented under the SS E-IV unit.
There is no evidence that a functional prototype was ever made. The claim of an ability to travel in some inter-dimensional mode is similar to Vril claims of channeled flight with the Jenseitsflugmaschine (Other World Flight Machine) and the Vril Flugscheiben (Flight Discs).
A video presentation on the Vril and Thule Societies [1] Runtime 57 minutes 21 seconds in Real media format.
[edit] Sources
- Sir Edward Bulwer-Lytton (1870). Vril, The Power of the Coming Race.
- Peter Bahn, Heiner Gehring: Der Vril-Mythos, ISBN 3-930243-03-2
